Thanks for the comment (and sorry for the late reply)!
My aim was not to ground an ethical framework on common sense ethics alone. My train of thought was: 1- wait, this is so against common sense that it has to be wrong. 2- alternative frameworks are possible and (more) reasonable. 3- these also fit better with common sense judgments too - so this might be a better approach.
So I am not suggesting that we should uncritically follow common sense. I just use it as a test for some kind of "quality control".
I do agree that utilitarianism seems to be less arbitrary than non-utilitarian theories. But similar levels of arbitrariness can also be found there as well. For example, one can easily justify eating meat (which was your example), if one claims that this increases their productivity just a little bit and allow them to donate more to invertebrate welfare. As a matter of fact, an utilitarian should eat meat under these circumstances even without any regret. Note that many estimates argue that individual diets are inconsequential to a large degree when compared to the impact of even modest donations.
For the incommensurability of values, even if practical wisdom is not the philosophical best move here, there is no "utilitarian" move available since utilitarianism is fundamentally against incommensurability.
Finally, I can imagine that there might be some utilitarian reasons against strongly focusing on invertebrate welfare immediately due to potential backlash etc. But these can only justify actions that "fake" to do something different (say focus on chickens) without changing the real motive of promoting invertebrate welfare in the bigger picture - given that this represents the overwhelming majority of total utility. I am not satisfied with this explanation. I think there are independent reasons that justify genuine actions that do not necessarily focus on invertebrate welfare - but these are not found in utilitarianism.
Thanks for the comment! Very interesting points indeed!
While I do agree that non-utilitarian theories "don't say" as much as utilitarian theories about positive duties, high priority duties in particular, I partly disagree that non-utilitarian theories "can't say" much about positive duties or prioritisation.
Instruments like the golden rule or virtues like mercy and compassion may point to similar duties as "moderate" utilitarian theories point out.
To be honest, I was also very sympathetic to utilitarianism overall (saving drowning children from ponds - of course!), but recent “calculus” that point to (exclusive) massive shifts toward invertebrate welfare made me question whether this is a reasonable framework. As the authors of the Moral Weight Project rightly pointed out, they are just the messengers, these are just the results of applying utilitarianism. While I did find the project very insightful, my conclusion was that maybe utilitarianism needs to be questioned.
Lastly, while I understand that utilitarianism takes “human nature” into utility calculus, I don’t think this explains the whole picture. As I tried to explain, this can only function as an “excuse” not a “reason” for action (or inaction). Under utilitarianism (with “human nature” adjustments), people might be “excused” for not dedicating their entire life for invertebrates, but alternative life or career choices of these people cannot be found “reasonable”. I think alternatives can be reasonable (at least equally reasonable as the option of dedication to invertebrate welfare), and these need not be excuses. But these reasons are not to be found in utilitarianism.
How often grantees pivot to more modest goals or different tactics after they realise that their initial goals are very hard to reach or their initial idea does not deliver results- after they receive their grants for certain high goals and specific plans in their application? How do you balance holding grantees accountable vs. providing them flexibility?
Thanks for writing this. It has many interesting points.
One thing I would like to point out which might be of help is that many processed eggs are in fact processed from lower quality shell eggs (cracked or very dirty ones). Since these are typically not suitable for sale on retail as shell eggs, they are used as a waste product by processors.
This might update the impact of the intervention downwards (given that these are waste products whose substitution might impact fewer animals), but can also slightly update the possibility of change upwards due to consumer preference for alternatives (due to perceived quality concerns, rather than allergies - which can be a better leverage).
I would say my Kafessiz Türkiye (Cage-free Turkey) cofounding experience followed this pattern, at least partially. Of course, these weren't the only reasons but I think things could have been different if funding schemes were different. As for Animal Advocacy Careers, I don't really have a senior position to talk authoritatively about this issue but my subjective view is that again, different decisions about hiring (and increasing size) might have happened if funding schemes were different.
I guess AIM startup space might be a bit different since in AIM there is a significant "education" period that can teach founders to not to fall for "founder mistakes". Another reason might be that AIM provide a good amount of seed funding that can provide a long runway - something that other organisations don't have.
Looking at this again, I guess my observations are mainly focused on animal welfare space - which is something that I should have mentioned in the post (thanks for this). It may be that GHD funding is not like this.
But aside from that, the main argument of the post depends on the fact that most grants are annual or biannual which explains certain dynamics.
Country and/or domain specific career advising webcontent
80000 Hours and Probably Good are great but their advice can be off putting, irrelevant or not useful enough for many people who are not their main audience. Having content about potentially many impactful careers in medicine, academia, or engineering, in Japan, Germany, Brazil, or India can be much more useful and engaging for those people who are in these categories. This can also be done at a relatively low cost - one or two able and willing writers per country/domain.
2. “Budget hawk” organisation/consultancy that aims to propose budget cuts to EA organisations without compromising cost-effectiveness.
There is a lot of attention towards effective giving like %10 pledges. Another way of achieving similar outcomes is to make organisations spend less (%10 again?). We tend to assume that EA organisations are cost effective (which is true overall) but this does not mean that every EA organisation spends each penny with %100 cost-effectiveness. It is probable that many EA organisations can make cuts to their ineffective programs or manage their operations/taxes more efficiently. A lot of EA organisations have very large budgets, more than millions of dollars annually. So even modest improvements can be equivalent to adding many GWWC pledgers.
3. Historical case studies about movement or community building
Open philanthropy had commissioned some reports. But most of them are about certain policy reforms. Only a few are about movement or community building. I think more case studies can provide interesting insights. Sentience Institute’s case studies were very useful for animal advocacy in my opinion.
4. Grand strategy research
This might be already being carried out by major EA organisations. But I can imagine that most leadership and key staff members in EA organisations typically focus on specific and urgent problems and never have enough time and focus on taking a (lot of) step back and think about the grand strategy. Other people might also have better skills to do this too. By the way, I am also more in favour of “learning by doing” and “make decisions as you progress” type of approaches but nevertheless at least having “some” grand strategy can reveal important insights about what are the real bottlenecks and how to overcome them.
5. Commissioning impact evaluations of major EA organisations and EA funds.
I think the reasons for this are obvious. There are of course some impact evaluations in EA- GWWC’s evaluating the evaluators project was a good example (But note that this was done only last year, once - and from my perspective it evaluated the structure and framework of the funds, not the impact of the grants themselves). I definitely think there is a lot of room for improvement - especially on publicly accessible impact reports. I think this is all the more important for EA, since “not assuming impact but looking for evidence” is one of the distinguishing features of it.
I definately agree there is a lot of room of improvement in animal ethics. Most animal welfare people are cool with being unconventional but I think this kind of misses the point which is that we might not currently have the right moral framework.
I also think utilitarianism got "some" things right like extreme pain is really immoral, or one should be seeking efficiency (within reasonable limits) etc. But it remains weak and weird by itself, without any additional (and multiple) values and principles.
And apologies for the late reply - I turned off the notifications after the debate week.
I think the main argument I tried to put forward was more about the dependency of many organisations to one single major donor and the risks associated with this (and how it would make sense to mitigate this via more donations). And to be clear, I wasn’t criticising Open Philanthropy. I just think that given Open Philanthropy is a bit alone in the field, animal welfare is neglected in a unique way. If there were multiple donors that are equally major as Open Philanthropy, there wouldn’t be such fragility. But as far as I am aware, EAAWF and ACE do not have such funds and do not provide such large grants as of now. They are much smaller than the OP farm animal welfare program.
I don’t think it would be likely that OP, ACE and EAAWF simultaneously decide to downscale, since OP has multiple causes while ACE and EAAWF have sole focus on animal welfare. So I don’t think having a bigger EAAWF or ACE would result in the same level of fragility, even if organisations still depend on major donors. The main difference would be that many organisations would rely on multiple major donors rather than one single major donor.
By the way, I am less concerned with which avenue (funds or individual organisations) one should choose to donate. But my initial concern with the “individual” approach was that more individual donors spread more funds to more organisations which at the end would not help to mitigate this fragility if OP withdraws from animal welfare or significantly downscales. In theory, individual donors can also coordinate to channel their donations to fill in the gaps if such an event occurs, but in practice, I think funds would be more able to do this more efficiently. This is more of a practical issue which I don’t have super strong views about.
On the other hand, “funds vs. individual donors” is another debate where I strongly agree with you that more oversight of individual donors is very needed. As you mentioned, this depends mostly on the level of knowledge of the donors, but I can also add (in favour of the individual approach) that this also depends on the level of engagement of the donors. I don’t expect major funds with limited staff can engage with each of their grantees perfectly. I think individual donors can play a very important role in engaging with these organisations as “shareholders” (or grant managers) and hopefully improve their performance. Of course, donors can do that for funds to some degree as well.
To reply to the last paragraph: yes, I think this is a fair summary.
Thanks for the comment (and sorry for the late reply)!
My aim was not to ground an ethical framework on common sense ethics alone. My train of thought was:
1- wait, this is so against common sense that it has to be wrong.
2- alternative frameworks are possible and (more) reasonable.
3- these also fit better with common sense judgments too - so this might be a better approach.
So I am not suggesting that we should uncritically follow common sense. I just use it as a test for some kind of "quality control".
I do agree that utilitarianism seems to be less arbitrary than non-utilitarian theories. But similar levels of arbitrariness can also be found there as well. For example, one can easily justify eating meat (which was your example), if one claims that this increases their productivity just a little bit and allow them to donate more to invertebrate welfare. As a matter of fact, an utilitarian should eat meat under these circumstances even without any regret. Note that many estimates argue that individual diets are inconsequential to a large degree when compared to the impact of even modest donations.
For the incommensurability of values, even if practical wisdom is not the philosophical best move here, there is no "utilitarian" move available since utilitarianism is fundamentally against incommensurability.
Finally, I can imagine that there might be some utilitarian reasons against strongly focusing on invertebrate welfare immediately due to potential backlash etc. But these can only justify actions that "fake" to do something different (say focus on chickens) without changing the real motive of promoting invertebrate welfare in the bigger picture - given that this represents the overwhelming majority of total utility. I am not satisfied with this explanation. I think there are independent reasons that justify genuine actions that do not necessarily focus on invertebrate welfare - but these are not found in utilitarianism.
Thanks for the comment! Very interesting points indeed!
While I do agree that non-utilitarian theories "don't say" as much as utilitarian theories about positive duties, high priority duties in particular, I partly disagree that non-utilitarian theories "can't say" much about positive duties or prioritisation.
Instruments like the golden rule or virtues like mercy and compassion may point to similar duties as "moderate" utilitarian theories point out.
To be honest, I was also very sympathetic to utilitarianism overall (saving drowning children from ponds - of course!), but recent “calculus” that point to (exclusive) massive shifts toward invertebrate welfare made me question whether this is a reasonable framework. As the authors of the Moral Weight Project rightly pointed out, they are just the messengers, these are just the results of applying utilitarianism. While I did find the project very insightful, my conclusion was that maybe utilitarianism needs to be questioned.
Lastly, while I understand that utilitarianism takes “human nature” into utility calculus, I don’t think this explains the whole picture. As I tried to explain, this can only function as an “excuse” not a “reason” for action (or inaction). Under utilitarianism (with “human nature” adjustments), people might be “excused” for not dedicating their entire life for invertebrates, but alternative life or career choices of these people cannot be found “reasonable”. I think alternatives can be reasonable (at least equally reasonable as the option of dedication to invertebrate welfare), and these need not be excuses. But these reasons are not to be found in utilitarianism.
Thank you Karolina for the detailed answer!
How often grantees pivot to more modest goals or different tactics after they realise that their initial goals are very hard to reach or their initial idea does not deliver results- after they receive their grants for certain high goals and specific plans in their application? How do you balance holding grantees accountable vs. providing them flexibility?
Thanks for writing this. It has many interesting points.
One thing I would like to point out which might be of help is that many processed eggs are in fact processed from lower quality shell eggs (cracked or very dirty ones). Since these are typically not suitable for sale on retail as shell eggs, they are used as a waste product by processors.
This might update the impact of the intervention downwards (given that these are waste products whose substitution might impact fewer animals), but can also slightly update the possibility of change upwards due to consumer preference for alternatives (due to perceived quality concerns, rather than allergies - which can be a better leverage).
Hi there!
I would say my Kafessiz Türkiye (Cage-free Turkey) cofounding experience followed this pattern, at least partially. Of course, these weren't the only reasons but I think things could have been different if funding schemes were different. As for Animal Advocacy Careers, I don't really have a senior position to talk authoritatively about this issue but my subjective view is that again, different decisions about hiring (and increasing size) might have happened if funding schemes were different.
I guess AIM startup space might be a bit different since in AIM there is a significant "education" period that can teach founders to not to fall for "founder mistakes". Another reason might be that AIM provide a good amount of seed funding that can provide a long runway - something that other organisations don't have.
Looking at this again, I guess my observations are mainly focused on animal welfare space - which is something that I should have mentioned in the post (thanks for this). It may be that GHD funding is not like this.
But aside from that, the main argument of the post depends on the fact that most grants are annual or biannual which explains certain dynamics.
80000 Hours and Probably Good are great but their advice can be off putting, irrelevant or not useful enough for many people who are not their main audience. Having content about potentially many impactful careers in medicine, academia, or engineering, in Japan, Germany, Brazil, or India can be much more useful and engaging for those people who are in these categories. This can also be done at a relatively low cost - one or two able and willing writers per country/domain.
2. “Budget hawk” organisation/consultancy that aims to propose budget cuts to EA organisations without compromising cost-effectiveness.
There is a lot of attention towards effective giving like %10 pledges. Another way of achieving similar outcomes is to make organisations spend less (%10 again?). We tend to assume that EA organisations are cost effective (which is true overall) but this does not mean that every EA organisation spends each penny with %100 cost-effectiveness. It is probable that many EA organisations can make cuts to their ineffective programs or manage their operations/taxes more efficiently. A lot of EA organisations have very large budgets, more than millions of dollars annually. So even modest improvements can be equivalent to adding many GWWC pledgers.
3. Historical case studies about movement or community building
Open philanthropy had commissioned some reports. But most of them are about certain policy reforms. Only a few are about movement or community building. I think more case studies can provide interesting insights. Sentience Institute’s case studies were very useful for animal advocacy in my opinion.
4. Grand strategy research
This might be already being carried out by major EA organisations. But I can imagine that most leadership and key staff members in EA organisations typically focus on specific and urgent problems and never have enough time and focus on taking a (lot of) step back and think about the grand strategy. Other people might also have better skills to do this too. By the way, I am also more in favour of “learning by doing” and “make decisions as you progress” type of approaches but nevertheless at least having “some” grand strategy can reveal important insights about what are the real bottlenecks and how to overcome them.
5. Commissioning impact evaluations of major EA organisations and EA funds.
I think the reasons for this are obvious. There are of course some impact evaluations in EA- GWWC’s evaluating the evaluators project was a good example (But note that this was done only last year, once - and from my perspective it evaluated the structure and framework of the funds, not the impact of the grants themselves). I definitely think there is a lot of room for improvement - especially on publicly accessible impact reports. I think this is all the more important for EA, since “not assuming impact but looking for evidence” is one of the distinguishing features of it.
Thanks!
I definately agree there is a lot of room of improvement in animal ethics. Most animal welfare people are cool with being unconventional but I think this kind of misses the point which is that we might not currently have the right moral framework.
I also think utilitarianism got "some" things right like extreme pain is really immoral, or one should be seeking efficiency (within reasonable limits) etc. But it remains weak and weird by itself, without any additional (and multiple) values and principles.
Thank you @ASuchy
Thanks for the comment!
And apologies for the late reply - I turned off the notifications after the debate week.
I think the main argument I tried to put forward was more about the dependency of many organisations to one single major donor and the risks associated with this (and how it would make sense to mitigate this via more donations). And to be clear, I wasn’t criticising Open Philanthropy. I just think that given Open Philanthropy is a bit alone in the field, animal welfare is neglected in a unique way. If there were multiple donors that are equally major as Open Philanthropy, there wouldn’t be such fragility. But as far as I am aware, EAAWF and ACE do not have such funds and do not provide such large grants as of now. They are much smaller than the OP farm animal welfare program.
I don’t think it would be likely that OP, ACE and EAAWF simultaneously decide to downscale, since OP has multiple causes while ACE and EAAWF have sole focus on animal welfare. So I don’t think having a bigger EAAWF or ACE would result in the same level of fragility, even if organisations still depend on major donors. The main difference would be that many organisations would rely on multiple major donors rather than one single major donor.
By the way, I am less concerned with which avenue (funds or individual organisations) one should choose to donate. But my initial concern with the “individual” approach was that more individual donors spread more funds to more organisations which at the end would not help to mitigate this fragility if OP withdraws from animal welfare or significantly downscales. In theory, individual donors can also coordinate to channel their donations to fill in the gaps if such an event occurs, but in practice, I think funds would be more able to do this more efficiently. This is more of a practical issue which I don’t have super strong views about.
On the other hand, “funds vs. individual donors” is another debate where I strongly agree with you that more oversight of individual donors is very needed. As you mentioned, this depends mostly on the level of knowledge of the donors, but I can also add (in favour of the individual approach) that this also depends on the level of engagement of the donors. I don’t expect major funds with limited staff can engage with each of their grantees perfectly. I think individual donors can play a very important role in engaging with these organisations as “shareholders” (or grant managers) and hopefully improve their performance. Of course, donors can do that for funds to some degree as well.
To reply to the last paragraph: yes, I think this is a fair summary.